Whats a good external usb 3.0 hard drive to record onto?

[[email protected]]

Whats a good external usb hard drive to use for recording my projects. I use a laptop.

[YYR123]

Windows is USB 3.0 drive.....any drive but the major OEM's are safe.

Mac is a FireWire or TB

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Whats a good external usb hard drive to use for recording my projects. I use a laptop.

You use what exact model laptop with what USB interfaces on it? USB 2, USB 3, full USB 3.1? Anything else? (EDIT: Oops I see you say USB 3 in the title). Or does the laptop have the option of a second internal drive?... that's often better than dealing with external drives and cables.

What is the internal boot/system drive in the laptop now, if it's a high performance SSD (especially a PCIe based SSD you likely do not need a dedicated audio drive).

Just post a Sandra report of the laptop of you are not sure.

And why a hard drive especially for portable use? Where the drives get bashed, bumped, poked, dropped a SSD is likely a better choice. And for higher performance IO an SSD is likely a better choice anyhow.

Given that I'd not buy a HDD for anything but backup the first external USB 3 drive I would go for would be this SSD one... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147376

But if your laptop is the one showing up in your profile and you only have a default 5,400 RPM internal HDD then I'd be junking that crappy boot/system disk and putting in a Samsung 850 Evo or Pro SSD, and even better than a USB 3 drive I'd be pulling out the DVD tray and putting in a second 850 Evo or Pro Audio drive. (replacing the DVD drive is shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql4jmIOFb7c). A 5,400 RPM boot/system drive drags the performance of the whole computer down, and will utterly suck of you say try to steam some demanding streaming sample based VIs off that drive. No really nice way to say this, but I'd not be buying a Dell laptop to run Pro Tools (or other DAW).

[[email protected]]

What about G-Tech external hard drives are they any good?

[YYR123]

Supposed to be, but with anything check your specs....faster the drive the better....7200rpm is the baseline

[VRW]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Whats a good external usb hard drive to use for recording my projects. I use a laptop.

If you are on a tight budget (7200rpm HDDs, will work reliably with Pro Tools as well).
Put this one
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita...ital+black+2.5
into this one
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Inat...osure+2.5+uasp
$74.- (HDD 7200rpm, USB 3, 750GB)

or get one of those
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MSU37500GB16/
$85.- (HDD 7200rpm, USB 3, 500GB)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MSU37T1.0T16/
$104.- (HDD 7200rpm, USB 3, 1TB)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie/301983/
$119.- (LaCie HDD 7200rpm, USB 3, Firewire 800, 500GB)

Other options (the faster and more sturdy ones -SSDs).
The most affordable external SSD solution.
Put this one
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-In...+850+evo+500gb
into this one
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Inat...osure+2.5+uasp
$189.- (Samsung SSD, USB 3, 500GB)

or get such a one (useable with Mac as well but preferably for Windows/PC)
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Portab...rds=samsung+T1
$199.- (Samsung SSD, USB 3, 500GB)

A very good quality SSD in an external enclosure (SSD available with 1TB, 2TB as well).
Put this one
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-512GB-...+850+pro+500gb
into this one
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Inat...osure+2.5+uasp
$247.- (high quality Samsung SSD, USB 3, 512GB)

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other.../MSU3SSD480GB/
$249.- (OWC SSD, USB 3, 480GB)

Widely used by professionals, reliable and very fast.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie/9000491/
$499.- (LaCie Rugged SSD, USB 3, Thunderbolt, 500GB)

Of course there are more options out there but these might be some of the interesting
yet affordable ones for the use with a mobile Pro Tools set up.

Cheers.

[reichman]

This USB3/eSATA enclosure is wonderfully quiet, cheap, and has nice features:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-051-_-Product

Using it with a 6TB drive and it performs very well.

[[email protected]]

Should I be concerned with the transfer rate of the 3.0 USB drive. Is 136 Mb/s fast enough for recording onto? Is this typical, will I have any issues with this transfer rate?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

Should I be concerned with the transfer rate of the 3.0 USB drive. Is 136 Mb/s fast enough for recording onto? Is this typical, will I have any issues with this transfer rate?

What USB 3 drive are you looking at/getting that spec for?

Recording/playing back what onto those disks? It's easy to create a large session that will overwhelm any single HDD. How many mono (or 2 x stereo) audio tracks are you playing back/recording at what sample rate?... you can easily back of the envelope check the minimum bandwidth needed by multiplying out the total bandwidth of those tracks... but that still does not give you any clue if the latency of the drive will be OK.

It is often not lack of bandwidth that kills a drive for audio, it's latency, hence the 7,200 RPM minimum.

USB 3 with a 7,200 rpm HDD is a good starting point for Windows. You will get a bit better performance with an internal SATA III HDD, and doing that on your laptop does not look hard, but mostly it's less hassle than carrying around an external drive.

[c-tone]

Originally Posted by [email protected]

What about G-Tech external hard drives are they any good?

Yes, I can recommend the G-Drive Mini USB external 7200 RPM. If you plan on recording and or playing back a lot of tracks with a lot of edits, you might want to get one with a SSD inside instead of a spinning disk.

I suggest you start with a 7200 RPM drive, and if you run into issues with it not handling your sessions, then just use it as a backup drive and then get an SSD.